shall renew their strength." The fainting heart need not fear, nor the wea one be discouraged, for God will "renew their youth like the eagle's." Th progress then of all Zion's pilgrims is sure. This progress is not always observable to the pilgrims of Zion. They fee that they are slow learners in the school of Christ. But it is in spiritual a in natural growth, it goes on silently and unobserved. Who would think that that child would pull down kingdoms A few years and there is a marvellous development of the physical as well as mental powers. It ofter happens that when we think we are growing the least, we are growing th most; and the howling winds that threaten our destruction, only cause us t take deeper root and stronger hold upon the soil. We are growing if w know more of the weakness of our own nature, and the treacherousness an hideousness of sin and the devil. If there be a more simple dependenc upon Christ, and a constant feeling of the necessity of deriving life from His wounds. Not growing! Yet we know more of the tempter's fatal power -we feel the need of being covered with the shield of Divine protectionwe have learned the lesson that when "we are weak then we are strong"- -ar we feel that "the life we live in the flesh, we live by the faith of the Son o God, who loved us and gave Himself for us." Weep not then, pilgrims o Zion, for progress has been made; and if not so rapidly as you could desire, yet not less certain is it that you are nearer the end of your pilgrimage. They can, however, really tell that progress has been made. Let the pilgrims of Zion review the way they have gone, let them "remember the way the Lord their God hath led them in the wilderness," and they will at once see that they have made progress. See, that stream hath been forded that mountain summit scaled, that dark and gloomy valley left in the distance. Are they not now approaching scenes they only can see who ar nearing the celestial city? Do they not at times catch a glimpse of th new Jerusalem? Progress, then, must have been made. Stay not in yonder plain! neither linger in the valley! again, and renew once more thy journey. Forget the encountered, and the milestones thou hast passed. Press on, looking unt Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith, who " for the joy that was se before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is set down at th right-hand of the throne of God." On, pilgrim, on! III. THEIR CITY of Rest. On, pilgrim, on Gird up thysel hazardous scene "Every one of them in Zion appeareth before God." Happy pilgrims now that this glorious city is not simply in their view, but inhabited by them! Their feet tread the golden streets, and they have upon their brow better than princes' crowns-a glory not dimmed by time, a joy unknown earth. They do not feel disappointed now that they have arrived at it. We ar sometimes disappointed with the scenes which we visit, about which we have heard some enthusiastic person speak; but Zion's pilgrims will not be dis appointed with heaven. We shall find, then, that we spoke about it a children, and that our highest conceptions of it were poor. With what joy shall we look upon Abraham, who upon the Mount uplifted the glittering knife in obedience to the command of God, even though the stroke should bight his hopes for ever? And how sweet to see all the holy men of Bible tory, whose lives we have read with such intense interest! How will the ngelic glory astonish our minds! But oh, with what transporting joy shall ra behold Christ, the Lamb slain for us! "We shall see Him as He is." Then will there be no thorn crown-no purple robe of mockery-no bitter, Ang taunts. We shall see Him arrayed in garments of celestial brightness, and behold his surpassing glory. Yet how benignant! There are no terrors His look, no lightning in His eye. His presence banishes away all grief and all pain. They will then better understand the necessity of their pilgrimage. On the journey they were often asking, "Why this, Lord ?" then they will Per at the wisdom of the way. Not a road too rough, nor a stream dried in vain. Not a valley too low, or a mountain too high. Not a cross too avy, and not a moment too long in the body. Yes, fellow pilgrims, we hall see that "all things have worked together for our good," making us eet for the inheritance of the saints in light." The Book of Providence will then be more easily read by us when we are sheltered within the strong walls of the city of Zion. They forget their sorrows in the remembrance of their joys. They do not et the sorrows of the Saviour, but their own sorrows are lost in the weight of glory. Once pointed at and mocked by the men of the world as ngular, how would such like to change places with them? They saw but haggard look, the tear-dimmed eye, the weary pilgrimage; but they ot the crown, the harp, the palm. Happy, happy pilgrims! whose oyment is in accordance with their heart's desire, which is to see the se of Christ, and to hear the melodious accerts that fall from His lips, and up to swell the solemn hymn of praise, "Unto Him that loved us, and shel us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and Prists unto God and His Father, to Him be glory and dominion for ever Liever. Amen!" Reader, are you a pilgrim on the road to Zion? Have you commenced heavenly journey? Christ is the way. He says, "No man cometh unto Fater but by me." The way of sin is not all happiness, but the ways of wisdom are "pleasantness and all her paths are peace." I love to journey on the road, That leads to heaven-that leads to God; If faint at times I tread the road, I hear within a still small voice, That makes my troubled heart rejoice, Coleraine, Ireland. The pilgrim road I fondly love, THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF LIFE. BY THE REV. THOMAS ROSE. "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them wh are the called according to his purpose."-Romans viii. 28. WE may safely assert, and that in most earnest opposition to the represtations of some of the professed disciples of Christ, that Christianity is designed to make men happyhappy now as well as hereafter. It was sent by a merciful God to stay the ravages of that disease which for long centuries had laid waste the whole world to strike at the root of that tree which has borne so heavy a crop of woe. It may happen-it does happen- that many Christians are not happy; care graves its deepening lines upon their foreheads, and anguish desolates their hearts. But this comes of the evil which still cleaves to us, holding us back from the enjoyment of God-sent blessings, shutting the windows of the soul against the entrance of God-sent light. Ample is the provision our Heavenly Father has inade for our wants, thoughtful are the means he has employed to ensure our happiness and when an apostle bids us Rejoice evermore,' everything to give thanks," he does not urge us to impossibilities. "In Now it is very noticeable that God gave man so large a time to speculate upon the vast problems of human life. For four thousand years of long expectation did thoughtful spirits ponder those problems, wondering what to make of things as they found them, doubtful where to look for relief. Job and his friends, seated at the door of their Arab tent, with limitless desert before them, had started questions which at that early time no man could answer; and we may well believe that, long before Job's day, sorrow-laden men had stumbled at the same appalling difficulties. Yet one such verse as this we have taken for our text would have served to irradiate that painful gloom, to disperse that thick chill mist, telling men as it does that a good man's life, viewed as a whole, tends towards good-rolls on beneath the watchful eye of God into that unfathomed ocean which we in our pour way call eternity. So much may we learn from our text. I will state these points more explicitly, and offer one or two remarks upon them. I. Our life is to be viewed as whole, and not only in its several parts. II. Our life is to be viewed as unfolding itself according to a Divine plan. III. Our life is to be viewed in relation to God's final purpose, viz., our eternal blessedness. I. Our life is to be viewed as a whole. I need scarcely remind you that it is our natural tendency--a tendency it is hard indeed to withstand-to do the very opposite,-to dwell exclusively on details, to fix our attention on isolated events, to pick out some one scene, whether pleasurable or painful, and to concentrate all our thought on We do this as fresh scenes present themselves. Thus, for instance, it is Well-nigh impossible for the widow in the first hour of her strange desolation, with the wild waves of an unwonted row wearing her bared heart-it is Fell-nigh impossible for her to look beyond that overwhelming present, and to connect that present with the past and with the future. And equally difficult would it have been for her, in the first glad hours of married life, to turn from the bright warmth of her cheerful home to peer into the threatening darkness lying beyond. The present absorbs us. We detach events from their antecedents and their consequents, and consider them as standing alone. We do this when ruminating on the past. Now scene of sparkling gladness, and Low one of unutterable misery, passes before us; now the heart wears "sorrow's crown of sorrow" whilst remembering happier things," and now it dwells with lingering sadness some old yet unforgotten grief. We call up scraps and fragments of the past, and well may life thus re ed by us appear an insoluble and crashing mystery. But it is of "the ALL THINGS" that go to make up life, if these as "WORKING TOGETHER, the apostle speaks. View life, et in parcels, but in its entirety, and then you will see that good is the final goal, that good is the one proyielded by the interfusion of the varied ingredients, remaining imperishable residuum from te long-continued and subtle process. Moreover, it is not enough that the whole of life be passed in review-all the one parts are to be seen to form a LE For life is not made up of many single portions, independent disjoined. It is not a bundle of dents, forcibly, or, at any rate, dentally, thrown together. It is mosaic formed of pieces arti Ally conjoined. It may be more likened to a living organism, in which the growth of the present is based upon the past, whose to-morrow is the birth of its to-day. In our lives, one event flows out of another. There is a long chain of causes and effects. The present holds the seeds of the future. You cannot take one year of your life and say, "This year had nothing whatsoever to do with all that went before; it has had nought to do with all that has followed after; it stands absolutely alone, an insulated portion of my life." And all this, as we shall soon proceed to point out, is true, not only of our present life, but also of our immortality. Man's whole existence is one; death even does not sever the chain. If, then, such a whole-so firmly welded together, nay, so organic in its unity, being "fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth "-if such a whole is to be rightly comprehended by us, it must evidently be viewed as a whole. It is not by minutely examining each separate item-the trees burnished with the light of sunset, the cattle grazing silently in the watered meadows, the shepherd leaning on his crook-that we gain a just conception of the pictured landscape. The glory of the building is not perceived by dwelling in detail on its various architectural adornments, its sculptured friezes, the graceful shafts and enfoliated capitals of its many columns, its airy roof; the eye must take in each well-wrought part at a single view, as combining to form one imposing structure. You cannot judge of the effect of the chorus by listening now to the tenor parts, now to the bass; all the voices must be heard together swelling grandly in their well-timed harmony. Raphael, the sublimest of painters, left as a legacy to coming generations certain pictures which are the wonder and delight of all lovers of art. These cartoons, as they are called, because sketched on paper, were found in separate sheets. Little would be learned from viewing these sheets singly. On one, perhaps, was the scowling face of Judas, on another, the radiant, youthful face of John. These fragments had to be skilfully pieced together before men could form an adequate conception of this treasured bequest of genius. So with the Christian's life. It must be pieced together. The bright lines and the dark lines; the sky black with angry clouds, or smiling with the happy sunshine; the flower filling the air with beauty and perfume, the dank weed growing by its side; the trim cottage, the home of mirth and pleasantness, and the mouldering ruins overgrown with briars and tanglegrass-all these go to make one picture. Take care that you look at that picture as one, though made of many parts, or you will never understand it. It is this solemn truth makes every day, every hour, so unspeakably important, each trifling act so big with destiny. This renders each harboured thought, each spoken word, each acted deed, momentous. If life were parcelled out, if a sharp line could cut off to-morrow from to-day, how widely different a thing life would be! If at the end of every year, for instance, we could leave our old selves behind us and cross the boundary into another year that should be really a new year, life would not be half so solemn as it is. Or, once more, let us suppose and this we can easily do-that death so rolled between this life and the next as to make our two lives altogether distinct, so that nothing from the present should travel on into the everlasting hereafter, no consequences reach beyond that dividing gulf; suppose that that future bore no such relation to the present as the ripening corn bears to the buried seed, or the oak to the acorn; suppose we landed upon those untravelled shores, unfreighted for evil or for good, with our past experiences; suppose that that history of ours which is to be, were in no real sense a continuation of that history we are working out now; -why then I know not that we need fear to live or fear to die. But this we all know is not the case. All thing all days, and weeks, and years, a thoughts and deeds, all events th happen, all are working together, a the result of their co-working reache onward into the infinite time before u II. Our life unfolds itself accordin to a Divine plan. This is not stated in so man words, but is left to be ferred. If all things do thus wor together for good, some plan mu guide their working; this could a happen beneath the reign of chanc The life, then, of the Christian ma with all its multitudinous facts, is cr forms a sublime and mysterious drama scene following scene, act succeeding act, in accordance with the order la down by God, all leading on to on foreordained and magnificent catas trophe. This is one of the apparentl daring doctrines of Christianity; nonbut a religion of Divine origin would venture upon such strong statement as abound in the Bible: and take only this one, "The very hairs of you head are all numbered." A certai vague belief in a superintending Providence seems inseparable from belief in a personal God. But me seek to extenuate their belief in governing Providence, to beat it ou thin, to hide the plain truth in a mi of generalities. They shrink from th obvious conclusion, God manage our mean affairs." Yet it seems t me that the Bible is ignorant of th distinction between a special Provi dence and a general Providence; th only general Providence it speaks o is that which is made up of specia Providence; and the general Provi dence is perfect because the special is complete." The web and woo of our lives are alike in the hand of God, and he weaves them int the pattern which is hidden in his own mind. Thus a Divine purpos runs through the whole of our exist ence, and life is no chapter of acddents blindly stumbling on beneath the fitful presidency of chance. Review one year of your life, let it be |